MOVE TO ALASKA

Our family was living in Salem, Oregon and Bob was working in a downtown bakery. One day we got a letter from my mom and dad asking us to come to Alaska. Dad was having problems with his eyes, and he was going to just sell the bakery for “peanuts” unless we could come to help him out for a year. He wanted to go to Seattle and have surgery on his eyes, and have the rest of the year to rest up from working so hard. Dad had no help in the bakery, except my mother who took care of all the business of dealing with customers. The food business is a difficult one to find competent help. Anyone can fry a hamburger, but not just anyone can make bread or decorate cakes. Consequently he just had to do it all himself.

We decided to go for one year. We stored our household goods, rented our house, and left our car sitting in the yard of a friend. It was the first new car we ever had, and when we contacted AAA about driving to Alaska they discouraged us by telling us how terrible the Alcan highway was, with large boulders in the middle of the road etc. This was in 1957 and the highway was rough, but they certainly exaggerated the driving conditions, but they scared us enough that we decided to park the car and fly to Juneau, Alaska.

When we got there dad wanted Bob to buy the shop so he would be completely out of the business. We had no money, and didn’t think any smart bank would loan us that much money. Consequently Bob worked for Dad that year and drew no pay for his services. If we found ourselves in need of money we could make a payroll draw, but we tried hard to not draw from the fund that was building up. I worked for Northern Commercial Company and was making $350 a month. From that we paid the rent on our 1 bedroom apartment, sent a car payment, and bought groceries. We ate a lot of beans and spaghetti for an entire year, and never once had a hamburger in a restaurant.

Linda was in the 3rd grade at this time, and she was not used to living like this, and she told her teacher that she didn’t have her own bed. She would start out in our bed with her daddy who got up around 3 a.m. to go to work, and when mama was ready for bed, Linda was carried out to the sofa bed for the rest of the night. Teacher thought she should maybe report this little child’s living conditions to the welfare office, but she investigated us more, as we became friends, and saw what we were sacrificing to pay for this business.

At the end of the year we had a good down payment, but not all the money we needed, when one of the salesmen came into the shop and Bob was telling him how we had been living to buy the shop. He said, “take off that apron and come with me to the bank.” Bob went with him and he agreed to co-sign on a loan so that we could borrow the rest of the money from the bank. We were in business.

At the end of the day if we had some cash profit, we would go over to the shipping dock and buy a sack of sugar or flour to operate the next day. That was how we managed for quite awhile, until we finally had some money in the bank.

While we were there we moved the bakery location from the original spot to two other spots. Each time we grew and it was no easy job moving those ovens and huge mixers

across the street to the new location. We lived in apartments above the shop until Linda was in the 6th grade and I wanted her to have a home to go to, not an apartment on one of Juneau’s streets, so we found a house and bought it. Finally we were home owners again.

Not only did we have a bakery, but we had a small eating establishment associated with the bakery, and we both worked very hard to keep things going. After 3 years with Northern Commercial I finally had to give up my nice job and work in the shop because we could not get dependable help, and I was doing double duty already.

Remember that we went there to spend a year, and here we were owners of a new business. This all took place before Alaska became a State. We did well, and worked hard and finally found our way out of Alaska to return to Oregon 30 years later.