During the next week, we rented an apartment (sharing with a woman and child) because we knew it would take at least three weeks before Dave could get the trailer home. A trailer moving company told us they would go get it for $800 plus tires @ $50 each. (Eventually, we used up five trailer tires.) We thought maybe we should have the trailer-moving company do it, but Dave changed his mind when he realized our main trouble had been that the weather was too warm (thawing and freezing makes more slippery roads than weather way below zero), so if the temperature dropped low enough in Canada, he figured he could get enough traction to pull the trailer with our old truck.
So Dave left ten days before Christmas with a friend he had met in Anchorage last summer. They took an axle and the necessary tires. They arrived back in Anchorage Tuesday before Christmas and said they had brought the trailer 70 miles closer but had broken another axle. So now the trailer was 450 miles away. They left again Saturday after Christmas with another axle, but returned after they found out it was not a broken axle after all but a broken rear end in the truck. And then his friend had to go to work, so Dave found a rear end and he and I left New Year's Eve (in a '67 VW we'd bought because that Chevy had cost us $100 in one month in gas, oil and antifreeze).
We got to the truck about half an hour after midnight, New Year's Day. It was about 20 degrees (for which we thanked the Lord; it had been as low as minus 40 since he had left it). He got out and fixed the truck and changed a tire on the trailer, and I tried to sleep in the back seat of the VW. No luck. I was so nervous I just lay there and shook.
We got started back at 6:30 a.m. We hadn't been driving five minutes till, distracted by Rachel, I ran off the road into a ditch full of snow, narrowly missing a telephone pole. Dave didn't see it happen, and left me behind. Both pulling wheels were stuck fast, and my lights were shining right on some other-than-human tracks in the snow.
I knew Dave would eventually miss me and come back, but how long? I took the opportunity to change and nurse Rachel and get her happily settled again, and then I waited. Man! of all the thoughts that can come into your head out in the wilderness alone and everything covered with snow, and those questionable tracks staring up at you. Eventually an on-coming semi stopped and pulled me out, and before he had me out, Dave was back to get me, having unhitched the trailer and returned in the truck. When we reached the trailer again, it had fallen off the jack and it took an hour to get it hooked up again. An HOUR of precious daylight. Because of my stupidity. You better believe I watched the road after that and let Rachel cry. And for the most part I drove in front.
We drove all day and slept in a log cabin Thursday night. Then we drove all day Friday and all night Friday night, and arrived in Anchorage at 3:45 Saturday morning. The road was fair all the way, but there were a few places where it was rather like greased glass. But we only spun out on two hills, one in Canada and one about 100 miles from Anchorage. The first hill we made because there was a handy sand box and I sanded the road while Dave backed the trailer about a half mile and made a hard run at it. He almost made it up and then I raked the sand he'd already run over in front of the spinning wheels (I was wildly running from one side of the truck to the other) and inch by icy inch we went to the top. I had never felt so accomplished in my life when we reached the summit...
The second hill we made with the chains, because it was snow (which chains will bite better than ice). On that one I had to go over the top and stop the traffic because when Dave had tried to back down, he'd jack-knifed and slid till he was on the wrong side of the road. And believe me, when a big truck drops over a hill that slick and something is in the way, it's just too bad, because they flat can't stop.
Anyway, we're finally here, and nearly set up. It's been consistently 10 to 30 below zero since we've had the trailer here. Right now we have no water or sewage; all pipes are frozen and busted, and there is 1 to 1-1/2 inches of ice on the inside of every window in the house, but it's warm inside, about 70 degrees. I keep the curtains and blankets over the windows and Rachel has slept with us several nights. When we get the water running and bisquine on the windows it will be better, I think. It's very hard to describe how exquisitely beautiful it is here. I've seen pictures which I thought were just exaggerations, but it really looks like that--the trees completely white, each separate little twig fluffy with ice particles. We really like the town and the people, but the cost is so high. Our $65 unemployment will barely feed us, and won't begin to pay the rent and utilities. Our neighbor has an 8x27 trailer which costs them $40 a month to heat. Our heater runs all the time...
Rachel is growing so much and so sweet. Has four teeth, goes everywhere in her walker and sits in hi-chair in front of mirror for an hour talking to the baby in the mirror. Has a twig of hair over ears on both sides, and getting more and more hair, which all sticks straight up, of course. Pretty soon I'll be calling her the "girl with the straight-up hair"; remember Mary Ross Taylor, the "girl with the straight down hair"? [Mary was a childhood classmate in Arkansas.]
We like it here, so far, but the cost is so high it worries us. If Dave doesn't get us finished set up and get a job within a month, we'll probably have to come home.
Pray for us and write the news.
Love,
Jean, Dave, Rachel
Friday, May 18, 2012
Thursday, May 17, 2012
The Letter Continues:
My First Ride On a Jet Plane...
... So much for Pine Pass. It was enough to put a nervous person in the hospital. All day Monday, I was nervous and couldn't eat very well. We reached Dawson Creek Monday night, and bought some regular truck chains, which were [very difficult] to put on the truck because the weight of the gasoline made the fender wells set down too close to the wheels. Anyway, Monday night at Dawson Creek, we decided I should fly on from there because I was getting too sick to continue, and there probably wouldn't be any airport of any size between there and Whitehorse. And... it was getting colder, so cold I was afraid to expose Rachel, even to change her diapers, though I had to, of course. That night in Dawson Creek, I started throwing up--just nerves. Dave checked with the airlines and found there was no airport in Dawson Creek, but one in Fort St. John, a few miles on up the road, where the gravel road, the Alcan*, begins. So we went there Tuesday morning.
[*Remember, in 1970 the Alaska-Canadian Highway, or Alcan, was a gravel road from Fort St. John to the Canada/Alaska border, 1200 miles.]
At the airport they told us there would be a Canadian Pacific flight out of Ft. St. John that afternoon at 2:45, which would arrive at Whitehorse about 4:00 pm, where I could get connections to Anchorage. Canadian Pacific Airlines, however, doesn't fly to U.S. cities, even in Alaska, they told us, but in Whitehorse, I could get a Wien Consolidated plane to Anchorage. The only trouble was that the W.C. plane would leave Whitehorse about 15 minutes before I would arrive there, and I would have to wait in Whitehorse 2 days for another WC plane to go to Anchorage. But, they said, maybe I could get my pilot on the Canadian Pacific plane to radio ahead to the Wien pilot before we reached Whitehorse and ask him to wait and hold his flight for me because I was sick and had a little baby, etc., and they didn't legally have to, but they might do it if my pilot would explain the circumstances. That way I would get to Anchorage that same night, Tuesday.
So on that small hope, (and a lot of praying) we got me a ticket, and David drove away and left me in that airport. And that was the loneliest, scariest feeling I've ever had when he walked out and drove the rig away.
When I got on the Canadian Pacific plane that afternoon, I started telling the stewardesses about my situation, and they were so nice and went and told the pilot, and when we neared Whitehorse, he radioed ahead. As we were landing in Whitehorse, the stewardess came to me and told me the Wien plane was on the ground and waiting for me. I started crying. It was like a miracle unfolding in front of me. I just knew the Lord had touched that pilot's heart and made him hold that flight for me. But when I stepped off the plane, a man met us at the ground and told us that Wien plane had not specifically waited for me, but that flight had been cancelled because an engine had failed. The agent in Ft. St. John had misinformed me; the Wien flight had been scheduled to leave not 15 minutes before I arrived but an hour and a half, and I would have been out of luck if the engine hadn't failed. As it was, I could get a flight out the next day. Well, I thought, that's better than waiting here two days. (And, after all, what else could I do? I was hundreds, even thousands of miles from anyone I knew.)
It was bitter cold in Whitehorse, but the terminal was warm. I tried to get something to eat that I could keep down, but the coffee bar was closing and the woman running it looked angry at any last minute customers. She didn't have any milk or soup. I settled for a greasy grilled cheese sandwich I couldn't bear to look at for a couple of hours. When it was cold I ate a few bites. I drank coke out of a machine (25 cents, can you imagine?) [When I wrote this letter in 1970, I think bottled drinks were a dime.]
I talked to the Wien ticket agent there and he told me their airlines was sending another plane from Fairbanks, Alaska, down there with another engine for the one that was grounded there and that plane would take all the first plane's passengers and me to Fairbanks where I could get connections to Anchorage. That plane was due to arrive at 9:00 pm or so, and they would call me when it came. So I settled down with Rachel in a little room where the pilots get their briefings and flight plans. It had a couch, and I just made myself at home. Rachel went to sleep. Whitehorse is just a little nothing town in the bush and the last flight out was to have been at 7:30 pm, and after that the terminal building cleared and there was no one there but the watchmen and us. The other passengers on the Wien plane that had been grounded were in a hotel that the airlines had provided for them, but which the airlines wouldn't provide for me because my connection had not been a legal one and they weren't responsible for me. (In fact, if they had known I had prayed down that engine failure, they might have tarred and feathered me.)
Well, the plane didn't come in at nine, but at three a.m... But finally, about four o'clock I was on my way to Fairbanks, eating wonderful potato soup and crackers and milk, the first substantial food I had had all day and night, while we bucked 100-mile-per-hour winds (no kidding) and holding Rachel, who had slept peacefully all night. We had to stay in Fairbanks about three hours and the airlines provided a motel room and breakfast in a restaurant. Boy-oh-boy! the prices of things in Fairbanks are way beyond reason. The room was just rather ordinary, and I saw the price on the bill I signed, $23.00. My breakfast (hotcakes, a slice of ham, and glass of milk) was $2.50. Things, I find, are only a little cheaper in Anchorage. [Again, remember this was in November 1970.]
It was about 9:00 when we got to Anchorage. It was beginning to be daylight, and I could see huge flat hunks of ice floating around in the Cook Inlet as the plane flew over it. The city of Anchorage is very nice and clean, and most of it is new or rebuilt since the earthquake of 1964. They have had a very mild winter until right after Christmas. It was raining as we got off the plane, and wasn't too cold--nothing like Whitehorse or Fairbanks had been.
I had to get a cab out to the Coveys', my friends with whom I stayed till Dave came. Kathy was home very sick with bronchitis, and a little later her mother and father both came home from work really sick with the same thing. Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, I just rested and rested, and all the Coveys stayed in bed, too sick to eat their turkey. They were all better by Monday, but then Rachel was running a high fever and vomiting and coughing and stuffed up all at the same time. First time she was ever really sick, and it scared me. The pastor of the Church here, Brother Sullivan, and his wife, came over and prayed for her, and after that she got a little better. She hasn't had fever again since then, but she isn't rid of the cough or runny nose yet.
Dave came in the Thursday night a week after Thanksgiving. After I had left him at Ft. St. John, he had traveled only 400 miles further in seven days, and the going had been very rough. Apparently, from the things he told me, our little sliding in Pine Pass had been zero compared to the ones he had had after I left. He said he was so glad I wasn't there or he'd have been so worried he wouldn't have known what to do. Anyway, after the fourth attempt to climb one slippery hill, the axle on the truck had popped in two, and it took two road graders hooked together to haul him over that hill, after which he hitch-hiked to a little town, bought an axle, returned and put it on the truck, drove five miles further, and on the next slippery hill broke that axle. So another roadgrader hauled him to a level field behind a lodge and he left the whole rig there and caught a ride 150 miles into Anchorage (an army man just re-stationed here who had decided to drive the Alcan for once just to say he'd done it).
When Dave came in, he was covered with a black curly beard and six inches of hair in the back, and so dirty--oh, me. He hadn't slept for 36 hours straight, and the coat he'd worn from San Diego he had thrown away because it was torn to shreds from crawling under the truck so many times to put on the chains.
We didn't know where to start to straighten out the mess we were in... Everything we owned was sitting over there in Canada, 1150 miles away, except a small suitcase and two small boxes of clothes, mostly Rachel's. So we bought a car on Saturday morning, a fairly decent '60 Chevy sedan for $300, the cheapest we could find, and Dave started looking around Anchorage for the axle and some tires which needed replacing.
Sunday morning Sister Covey looked out the window and said, "Dave, did you park your car on the street in front of the house?"
"Yeah."
"There's no car out there." We thought she was joking.
But sure enough, someone had stolen our car. The police found the car Monday morning at four o'clock, abandoned in the middle of the road and out of gas. Joyriders. But they had hot-rodded it and now the transmission clanks and pops every time we stop. Oh, well, another minor mishap.
[...To be continued... maybe tomorrow...]
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
I found something that was lost a long time...
It was a letter I wrote to all my friends and family in January, 1970. I had made "carbon copies" (literally, with carbon paper) when I typed the letter with my manual typewriter.
Years went by and I lost track of my copy of the letter. Many times I wondered about it, especially over the last year or so when I was writing stories of my memories on this blog.
Finally, I was cleaning out boxes of old papers, cards, and letters that belonged to my mother. She passed away in 2009. It speaks of my laziness that I was just recently cleaning out all her keepsakes. There were so many papers to sort through that I was tempted to just toss it all without looking. I'm surely glad I didn't yield to that temptation, because deep in the pile I discovered many, many letters that I had written to her over the years, including her carbon copy of this letter written in January, 1970.
I will post this letter in segments, as it was 12 pages single-spaced.
Here is the story of the Goins Family (Dave, 33, me, 25 and Rachel, our babe-in-arms) and our move to Alaska from San Diego in November, 1969, through December, 1969.
...
January 9, 1970
Dear Friends and Relatives,
I'm going to try to sum up the main events of our move to Alaska. It would take a book to tell it all, so I'm trying just to "hit the hi-lights."
First of all, for those who don't know, we were pulling our house trailer which was very heavily loaded with everything we own, and carrying about 250 gallons of gasoline on a truck in 55-gallon drums, which we had to refill five times.
We left Bakersfield Tuesday, November 18, after spending a few days with my folks, (and after David supposedly fixing the truck which had given us a lot of trouble between San Diego and Bakersfield). We only got 100 miles the first day, because the truck still wouldn't run right, but he finally figured out what was the matter with it and fixed it, and it ran perfectly after that. I shudder to think what might have happened going up some of those mountains we climbed if it hadn't been running right.
Through California we had wonderful weather, but a few rather steep mountains in Northern California. Not far from the Oregon border we were driving before daylight in those mountains, on one of the few two-way traffic roads before Canada, and we ran out of gas and stalled on a narrow bridge. We had gas in the drums, but we had let it get too low in the truck's tank, so it was our own fault. Dave got as close to frantic as I had ever seen him, trying to signal traffic, and get some gas in the carburetor. I was sitting in the driver's seat, turning on the headlights every time an on-coming car's lights came in sight, and trying to calm Rachel, who had just decided it was time to wake up and have breakfast, and Dave would climb up under the hood and start pouring gas in the carburetor out of a beer can, and I would yell, "A car's coming around the curve behind!" and he would jump down, the flashlight in hand, race back behind the trailer and shine the light right in their eyes so they wouldn't fail to see us, and they would ease around us (there was barely room to pass) and then Dave would try to start the truck again, and the battery was getting low from having the lights on so much. Finally a bus (on-coming) stopped down at the curve behind us and put out flares, and stayed there flashing his emergency lights so cars would slow down before they got to us, which helped. But Dave still couldn't get the truck started.
Then an empty semi, also on-coming, saw our "plight" and turned around, came back, and hitched a chain to us and pulled us on over the bridge and to a pullout about half a mile up the road. There, it only took Dave about half a minute to get the gas running right and the truck started (and me to pull myself together), and we were on our way again. Thanking the Lord, of course.
Oregon was really beautiful country, and mostly good roads. We did hit a few spots where big bumps made us feel like we were riding a bucking bronco, namely, a little stream called "Jump-Off-Joe Creek", where for a space between the bridge and the road there was nothing but a hole, which we hit going about 40 mph, and the trailer went so wild that the next time I checked inside I found a light fixture had fallen and shattered all over the kitchen floor, and the "unbreakable" (don't you believe it) bottle of dish soap had fallen out of a cabinet we forgot to wire up and I had green Palmolive all over the kitchen floor. And if that stuff isn't a mess to clean up!
It rained in Oregon, though, our first experience with bad weather. From there on the trip became one little detail after another which didn't go as we'd hoped. The windshield wipers didn't work right. When it started raining there was absolutely no place where we could get our rig off the road to fix them. So we just went along in the rain, and Dave reached his arm out the window every minute or so and manually moved the wiper. But the visibility was so awful that we stopped in the first town we came to and spent the night, and the next morning it wasn't raining.
In Washington they have the most beautiful evergreens that just grow so green and thick and perfect that you think you're riding along in a Christmas card setting, except there was no snow, but I'm used to no snow at Christmas anyway, so we went along singing "Sleigh bells ring; are ya lis'nin'...?" In Washington we had our first "rest stop" where we really refreshed ourselves and I went to a laundromat and got all straightened out for the next leg of the journey, which proved to be far more difficult than the first.
To me there was a strange feeling about entering Canada. I felt so far from home, and like I was in a strange country, though Canadians are really similar to us in most ways. I guess it was the customs office. We had to pay a little over $12 duty on the gasoline we had with us, and the change they gave us was, of course, in Canadian money, which looked like play money to me. And they asked if we had any side arms, and they wanted to see $50, I suppose so they could be sure we would get all the way through Canada, and wouldn't get stuck there and have to get on their welfare. (Ha) We spent the night in the customs office parking lot, and left at daylight.
The Canadians seem to prefer BLUE houses, or three-toned ones. The typical house we would pass was black roof, blue gables, white sides and wood-colored trim. I never saw so many blue houses in my life.
That first day in Canada we finished the last of the divided highways, and we crossed some steep mountains that were barren and brown, in contrast to the cool, evergreen-covered slopes in Washington. We crept up most grades in first gear at about 15 mph, and only once or twice hit a grade so steep we had to get in "Grandma" gear. The second night in Canada we spent just outside a little town called Clinton. I was a little sick, had a headache which led to nausea, etc. Dave was so tired he went right to sleep, and slept right through a visit we had from some of the young male citizens of Clinton, who drove right up to the door of the trailer and yelled obscenities at us. They stayed out there laughing and carousing and hollering unrepeatable things for about half an hour, and I was so scared I didn't dare make a peep, and I thought Dave must be just quietly lying over there listening, too, and the next morning when I mentioned it, he said he hadn't even heard them. (Boy! I guess if they'd torn down the door and dragged me away, he'd have awakened the next morning and said, "Hmm. Wonder where Jean went...?") Oh, well.
That was Saturday night. Sunday was cold, the beginning of snow. The road was unspeakable, I suppose because over the years the snowplows had torn it up trying to scrape the snow away. We had to go slowly, we thought, but found out that night what going slow really was. We had supper in Prince George, BC, in a restaurant. I was nervous and couldn't eat very well. We decided to drive on, though it was dark, because it was getting dark so early, and we hadn't made much time that day. Out of Prince George we got into really big mountains, and the light little patches of snow we'd been seeing became total whiteness everywhere.
I guess it was about 9:30 when we came to what we later learned was Pine Pass. We had been noticing little patches of ice on the road, and had been climbing for several miles. Then we came to a grade so steep we had to creep along in Grandma gear. It was worse than any grade on the Grapevine, and the cliff on my side was straight down. They had a concrete curb about 20 inches tall all along there. I stopped looking. I just closed my eyes. Rachel was asleep on my lap, and I drifted off, too. I couldn't stand to look anymore at that white road and white bank creeping toward us. I woke up when Dave said, "Boy-oh-boy! We'd never make this one early in the morning icy as it is now." And about that time we weren't going forward anymore, but backward, slithering back down that mountain, wheels spinning. The trailer brakes held then, and we got to where we could let ourselves backward, but we couldn't go forward. I prayed.
Naturally, Rachel woke up. Maybe she sensed the tension in me, or got cold or something, but she started crying. Dave put some logging chains on the wheels, and still it wouldn't go forward. So inch by slippery inch we let ourselves back down to a place where there wasn't so much ice. Meanwhile, the tail end of the trailer got hooked on that 20-inch curb as the trailer rolled and the truck slid, sort of jack-knifing us, and we thought we'd never get the trailer unhooked from the curb. But I prayed, and finally with the help of the Lord we got enough traction to start forward again, and went on up that mountain, chains clanking. It was about a mile to the summit, but the steepest part of the grade only lasted a hundred yards or so. There was a lodge-ski resort at the summit, and we pulled in there to spend the night. They told Dave they had just had five feet of snow in the past two weeks... That's 60 inches. And I believed it. There were deep drifts on the tops of cars and other flat places. And it was mighty nippy....
...to be continued...
It was a letter I wrote to all my friends and family in January, 1970. I had made "carbon copies" (literally, with carbon paper) when I typed the letter with my manual typewriter.
Years went by and I lost track of my copy of the letter. Many times I wondered about it, especially over the last year or so when I was writing stories of my memories on this blog.
Finally, I was cleaning out boxes of old papers, cards, and letters that belonged to my mother. She passed away in 2009. It speaks of my laziness that I was just recently cleaning out all her keepsakes. There were so many papers to sort through that I was tempted to just toss it all without looking. I'm surely glad I didn't yield to that temptation, because deep in the pile I discovered many, many letters that I had written to her over the years, including her carbon copy of this letter written in January, 1970.
I will post this letter in segments, as it was 12 pages single-spaced.
Here is the story of the Goins Family (Dave, 33, me, 25 and Rachel, our babe-in-arms) and our move to Alaska from San Diego in November, 1969, through December, 1969.
...
January 9, 1970
Dear Friends and Relatives,
I'm going to try to sum up the main events of our move to Alaska. It would take a book to tell it all, so I'm trying just to "hit the hi-lights."
First of all, for those who don't know, we were pulling our house trailer which was very heavily loaded with everything we own, and carrying about 250 gallons of gasoline on a truck in 55-gallon drums, which we had to refill five times.
We left Bakersfield Tuesday, November 18, after spending a few days with my folks, (and after David supposedly fixing the truck which had given us a lot of trouble between San Diego and Bakersfield). We only got 100 miles the first day, because the truck still wouldn't run right, but he finally figured out what was the matter with it and fixed it, and it ran perfectly after that. I shudder to think what might have happened going up some of those mountains we climbed if it hadn't been running right.
Through California we had wonderful weather, but a few rather steep mountains in Northern California. Not far from the Oregon border we were driving before daylight in those mountains, on one of the few two-way traffic roads before Canada, and we ran out of gas and stalled on a narrow bridge. We had gas in the drums, but we had let it get too low in the truck's tank, so it was our own fault. Dave got as close to frantic as I had ever seen him, trying to signal traffic, and get some gas in the carburetor. I was sitting in the driver's seat, turning on the headlights every time an on-coming car's lights came in sight, and trying to calm Rachel, who had just decided it was time to wake up and have breakfast, and Dave would climb up under the hood and start pouring gas in the carburetor out of a beer can, and I would yell, "A car's coming around the curve behind!" and he would jump down, the flashlight in hand, race back behind the trailer and shine the light right in their eyes so they wouldn't fail to see us, and they would ease around us (there was barely room to pass) and then Dave would try to start the truck again, and the battery was getting low from having the lights on so much. Finally a bus (on-coming) stopped down at the curve behind us and put out flares, and stayed there flashing his emergency lights so cars would slow down before they got to us, which helped. But Dave still couldn't get the truck started.
Then an empty semi, also on-coming, saw our "plight" and turned around, came back, and hitched a chain to us and pulled us on over the bridge and to a pullout about half a mile up the road. There, it only took Dave about half a minute to get the gas running right and the truck started (and me to pull myself together), and we were on our way again. Thanking the Lord, of course.
Oregon was really beautiful country, and mostly good roads. We did hit a few spots where big bumps made us feel like we were riding a bucking bronco, namely, a little stream called "Jump-Off-Joe Creek", where for a space between the bridge and the road there was nothing but a hole, which we hit going about 40 mph, and the trailer went so wild that the next time I checked inside I found a light fixture had fallen and shattered all over the kitchen floor, and the "unbreakable" (don't you believe it) bottle of dish soap had fallen out of a cabinet we forgot to wire up and I had green Palmolive all over the kitchen floor. And if that stuff isn't a mess to clean up!
It rained in Oregon, though, our first experience with bad weather. From there on the trip became one little detail after another which didn't go as we'd hoped. The windshield wipers didn't work right. When it started raining there was absolutely no place where we could get our rig off the road to fix them. So we just went along in the rain, and Dave reached his arm out the window every minute or so and manually moved the wiper. But the visibility was so awful that we stopped in the first town we came to and spent the night, and the next morning it wasn't raining.
In Washington they have the most beautiful evergreens that just grow so green and thick and perfect that you think you're riding along in a Christmas card setting, except there was no snow, but I'm used to no snow at Christmas anyway, so we went along singing "Sleigh bells ring; are ya lis'nin'...?" In Washington we had our first "rest stop" where we really refreshed ourselves and I went to a laundromat and got all straightened out for the next leg of the journey, which proved to be far more difficult than the first.
To me there was a strange feeling about entering Canada. I felt so far from home, and like I was in a strange country, though Canadians are really similar to us in most ways. I guess it was the customs office. We had to pay a little over $12 duty on the gasoline we had with us, and the change they gave us was, of course, in Canadian money, which looked like play money to me. And they asked if we had any side arms, and they wanted to see $50, I suppose so they could be sure we would get all the way through Canada, and wouldn't get stuck there and have to get on their welfare. (Ha) We spent the night in the customs office parking lot, and left at daylight.
The Canadians seem to prefer BLUE houses, or three-toned ones. The typical house we would pass was black roof, blue gables, white sides and wood-colored trim. I never saw so many blue houses in my life.
That first day in Canada we finished the last of the divided highways, and we crossed some steep mountains that were barren and brown, in contrast to the cool, evergreen-covered slopes in Washington. We crept up most grades in first gear at about 15 mph, and only once or twice hit a grade so steep we had to get in "Grandma" gear. The second night in Canada we spent just outside a little town called Clinton. I was a little sick, had a headache which led to nausea, etc. Dave was so tired he went right to sleep, and slept right through a visit we had from some of the young male citizens of Clinton, who drove right up to the door of the trailer and yelled obscenities at us. They stayed out there laughing and carousing and hollering unrepeatable things for about half an hour, and I was so scared I didn't dare make a peep, and I thought Dave must be just quietly lying over there listening, too, and the next morning when I mentioned it, he said he hadn't even heard them. (Boy! I guess if they'd torn down the door and dragged me away, he'd have awakened the next morning and said, "Hmm. Wonder where Jean went...?") Oh, well.
That was Saturday night. Sunday was cold, the beginning of snow. The road was unspeakable, I suppose because over the years the snowplows had torn it up trying to scrape the snow away. We had to go slowly, we thought, but found out that night what going slow really was. We had supper in Prince George, BC, in a restaurant. I was nervous and couldn't eat very well. We decided to drive on, though it was dark, because it was getting dark so early, and we hadn't made much time that day. Out of Prince George we got into really big mountains, and the light little patches of snow we'd been seeing became total whiteness everywhere.
I guess it was about 9:30 when we came to what we later learned was Pine Pass. We had been noticing little patches of ice on the road, and had been climbing for several miles. Then we came to a grade so steep we had to creep along in Grandma gear. It was worse than any grade on the Grapevine, and the cliff on my side was straight down. They had a concrete curb about 20 inches tall all along there. I stopped looking. I just closed my eyes. Rachel was asleep on my lap, and I drifted off, too. I couldn't stand to look anymore at that white road and white bank creeping toward us. I woke up when Dave said, "Boy-oh-boy! We'd never make this one early in the morning icy as it is now." And about that time we weren't going forward anymore, but backward, slithering back down that mountain, wheels spinning. The trailer brakes held then, and we got to where we could let ourselves backward, but we couldn't go forward. I prayed.
Naturally, Rachel woke up. Maybe she sensed the tension in me, or got cold or something, but she started crying. Dave put some logging chains on the wheels, and still it wouldn't go forward. So inch by slippery inch we let ourselves back down to a place where there wasn't so much ice. Meanwhile, the tail end of the trailer got hooked on that 20-inch curb as the trailer rolled and the truck slid, sort of jack-knifing us, and we thought we'd never get the trailer unhooked from the curb. But I prayed, and finally with the help of the Lord we got enough traction to start forward again, and went on up that mountain, chains clanking. It was about a mile to the summit, but the steepest part of the grade only lasted a hundred yards or so. There was a lodge-ski resort at the summit, and we pulled in there to spend the night. They told Dave they had just had five feet of snow in the past two weeks... That's 60 inches. And I believed it. There were deep drifts on the tops of cars and other flat places. And it was mighty nippy....
...to be continued...
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