Yakima to Hay River, 1973 - 1977 (September 2010)

From September 19, 2010

In June 1973 my parents took us out of school two weeks early and we moved to a beautiful little orchard in Yakima, Washington.  When we had first arrived, the only thing in the kitchen was a wood-burning stove/oven and a free standing sink on one wall.  But, like all the houses in which I grew up, my parents fixed it up house with their typical craftsmanship and made it a beautiful home in a park-like setting. 

I lived here from sixth grade through the beginning of ninth grade in 1976 -- my early teenage years.  I think this is where some of my curiosity for rebellion was sparked because I do remember running away several times (usually never leaving the orchard, and almost always just until I got hungry or cold or just incredibly bored).  One day I decided to run away and climbed to the top of Pecks Canyon, which was the hill that overlooked our orchard, and stayed there for half a day.  When I finally got bored, I went back home only to find out that nobody had noticed me missing anyway.

This is my mother during a spinning demonstration that took place in Richland, WA.  I got dragged along into this against my will.  While my mother demonstrated the spinning wheel, I demonstrated using the spindle in spinning the wool into yarn. We were dressed in period clothing that my mother had made especially for this event.  A photo does exist of me demonstrating the spindle method, but thankfully I don't have it because there is a pretty nasty scowl on my face.  I was in 7th grade and I did NOT want to be there.

Wilson Junior High band uniform, SeaFair Parade

I loved being outside in Yakima.  I loved the hot, dry weather, the warm breezes, and learning about all the different kinds of fruit trees and how to take care of them: cherries of all kinds (Bing, Lambert, Republican, Royals Annes, etc), several varieties of apples, pears, nuts, apricots, peaches and plums.  We sold the fruit when ripe, usually picking it ourselves or U-Pick.  I learned the difference between picking cherries and milking them, depending on whether the customer wanted stems or not.  We had chickens, and a pure black Great Dane whose registered name was Laredo's Black Knight but my little brother Steve had nicknamed Blackie.  The name stuck for all his short three years of life until he was hit by a truck in the dark.  He was buried under his favorite resting spot, a dogwood tree near the garden.

In Yakima I learned how to can food, particularly fruit.  We had a pantry full of jars of canned fruits from cherries to peaches and everything in between.  I also learned how to set pipes (sprinklers) twice a day -- at dawn and dusk.  This was fortunately a chore that usually fell to the boys in the house due to the length of the pipes and difficulty carrying and setting them.  On our orchard was a small pond and my dad bought a six-wheel vehicle called a Scrambler which could go on land or water.  The trick was staying inside when making a turn because the wheels turned at 90-degree angles and there was no top.  So if you bounced out, you simply climbed back in.  My dad did drive it right into the pond to show us how it could go on either land or water, but quickly got caught in cattails and other brush debris and so that was kind of a failed effort.  We sat out there for quite a while waiting for him to come back and cut us free so we could get back on land.

Our scrambler looked sort of like this one I found on the internet.

My uncle used to visit us sometimes and say to my mother  "There are rattlesnakes all over the place out here!  Why are you letting your kids run all around without shoes??"  I recall seeing only one or two in the three years we lived there and it was usually near the pond where we took the scrambler into the water.

By 1975 my dad was already reviewing several job offers, one of which took him to Northwest Territories, Canada.  From what I remember, the position was offered all across Canada first and when no one accepted the offer, the position could be offered to an American.  The job was to set up a furniture factory so the Inuit (Eskimo) could eventually take over and bring in some money to the small town of Hay River, at the base of the Great Slave Lake.

This is the Inuit language, which was printed in the local newspapers.  I still have original newspapers somewhere.

In the wee hours on September 15, 1976, our family flew from Spokane to Seattle, and to Canada -- each flight brought us closer to Edmonton, Alberta, 682 miles south of Hay River, NWT, the nearest city.  The closer we got to Hay River, the smaller the planes became until the last one which barely held 5 of our family members.  We were told the flights stopped once the snow and cold hit.  It took six airplanes to get us there.

This was our first view of the entire town of Hay River.  We laughed because we thought it was the tiniest town we had ever seen and we were expecting to see igloos.  The landing strip was just to the right of this photo.  Our house was in a brand new development-- houses were still being built all around us and ours was the largest one in the development since my dad had such an important "government job."  

We had no yard yet, but it had been seeded, which is seen in this photo here, taken from our living room windows.  Personally, I felt putting the grass seed in bowls and setting them out for the birds would have saved somebody a bunch of time and money since the birds ate it all anyway.

Diamond Jenness High School

We immediately began school and were the only "Yanks" in the town.  My peers loved my American accent which I didn't notice as any different from theirs other than the fact that I said "huh" and they said "eh".  I did pick up that habit, however, much to the amusement of my Oak Harbor peers once our time in Canada had finished.  I went to a purple school called Diamond Jenness High School (which is now a secondary school).  Architecturally, it was the coolest school I had ever seen. Its purple exterior walls were rounded and every interior wall had a different pastel color.

Family mode of transportation

I was in 9th grade while we lived in NWT and in retrospect, it was the experience of a lifetime.  I didn't really fit in anywhere in school but I eventually made a couple of friends.  Every Tuesday was French day -- everyone, including the teachers, spoke French.  The morning announcements were in French, every class was in French and was even required in the lunch room.  I was handed a French book, took a French class, and given a little extra break by the teachers.  It was not easy but wasn't impossible.  I loved learning different languages and it came easy to me.

Shortly after we arrived, the snows came and the temperatures dropped well below anything I had ever experienced before.  It was dark when I went to school and dark when I returned home from school.  The lightest time of day was about 10 in the morning which to me seemed more like 10 o'clock at night-- not light enough to see anything anyway.

About 1 in the morning one night, my dad came into the room I shared with my sister and gently woke us and told us to come look outside.  We put on our coats, wrapped ourselves in blankets, and sat on our diningroom chairs in the back yard and saw the most brilliant scene in the sky that I'd ever seen in my life.  The sky was alive with pulsating and swirling vertical masses of color, mostly green and blue that seemed wild and alive, and like nothing I had ever before seen.

We watched these northern lights almost every night that we could, but as the winter progressed, we turned off all the lights inside the house and watched from inside our triple-paned windows, which were frequently covered with feathered patterns of frost by morning.  All cars came with battery blankets and at each parking spot was a post with an outlet so you could plug in your car as you shopped -- apparently cold weather kills batteries.  If you were not lucky enough to find a spot with an outlet, you simply left your car unlocked and running.  No one would take the car because this far north there was nowhere to go anyway.

Triple-paned window frost

There was one television channel in Hay River, and that was CBC, and this is when I learned to love watching Hockey.  I watched many, many games and became familiar with all the big name teams and players.  My favorite team became the Buffalo Sabers and I wore that shirt for a couple years with pride.  I also really liked the Philadephia Flyers.  We were always amazed by how good the American teams were against the Canadian teams, considering there was so much available ice in Canada.  Toward the end of the season they started allowing more violence into the game and as it more and more resembled a cross between boxing and wrestling, I lost interest in the sport.

In the spring, the weather stayed about the same-- 40-degrees below zero was normal, but we saw many days at 60-below and then some.  Everybody rode the school bus no matter how close you lived because the cold would freeze your lungs.  Our parkas were usually zipped completely up so the only opening was a small wolf-fur lined hole around the eyes.  At least in the spring you could see where you were going outside.  Once it hit 20 degrees above zero, the coats came off and we wore sweaters at best.
    

This is typical flora and fauna in Hay River in the spring, probably taken near the lake, which was completely frozen.  There was a road that crossed the lake, often driven on by trucks, or simply dog sled, as seen below.

Mackenzie River ice break up

The Mackenzie River emptied into the Great Slave Lake (4th largest lake on the continent), and ran through Hay River.  It was frozen most of the year, but when it began to crack and break up, for some reason it became a holiday and school was immediately let out.  I remember sitting in class hearing what sounded like gun shots -- the whole class jumped to their feet because the river was breaking up and school was dismissed.  It was a very big deal.

As the river continued to thaw, huge chunks of ice drifted everywhere, some pieces just as tall as myself.  Again, I had never seen anything like it before... nor had I seen the masses of gnats and tiny flies that filled the air once the snow melted.  Some people walked around with netting over their heads that they would scrape off every now and then as they walked. 

I got my first job here, sweeping floors for my dad's furniture factory and I saved the money to buy me a 10-speed bike which was about $200 at the time-- it was a nice bike and I often rode it to work and back.  I eventually lost my job because I was an American citizen and technically the job had to go to a Canadian.

After the tiny flies,  the giant flies arrived -- big, biting, mean flies, much larger than bumblebees.  We would have to run to get into the van and quickly shut all the doors while the giant flies chased after us.  We could hear them hitting the van even as we would start to drive.  They were mean!  

Land of the Midnight Sun

Another fascinating aspect of living in the north was that in the summer, the sun never fully set.  This photo was taken at midnight in Hay River.  The sun barely slid across the tops of the trees all the way across the horizon.  My dad made us foil-covered sheets of cardboard which we placed over our windows and tried to get some sleep.  I remember reading in bed by the light of day at 1 in the morning.  I don't know what the foil was for: extra darkness?

As interesting as living in NWT was, eventually my dad's contract with the Canadian government expired and once he had proved that the Inuit could handle taking over the furniture factory, it was time to head back to the states.  We drove 1800 miles south in our green Dodge van to an island in Puget Sound, Washington-- to a town on Whidbey Island, called Oak Harbor.

For some reason my parents thought it would be fun to take the ferry to Whidbey Island and so here is a photo of the van on its first trip to Oak Harbor.  That is Mendy looking out the front window.  I got to know that van very well and destroyed it within a few years while learning to drive.... that story will have to come next time.