We arrived in Alaska from California the first week in July 1946 (I calculate this by the fact we were in Whitehorse, YT. on the 4th. No parade, no fireworks, no nothing! Dad had come in the spring and bought a house on the NE corner of Spenard Rd. and Northern Lights Blvd. I started 1st grade that September at Anchorage Elementary, my sister, Lorrain would finish her senior year next door at Anchorage High. The school contracted the city bus system for school bus routes to outlying areas. Spenard being one. Now the house that my father bought had a telephone — it was the either the first phone going toward the city or the last if headed out (the house, the telephone, &c belong to a different story. p.s.: the number was Blue 499). I’m not sure but I think the bus driver would call to say the bus is on the way or delayed or whatever and that way the kids could check at the house and so forth.
It was shortly after the Christmas Vacation, cold, clear, and calm. Not unusual to be in the -30s. Almost every day was an adventure if you were dressed for it. Anyway, Lorrain wanted to catch the but going out as she could sit where she wanted, mainly away from snot nosed brother and other roudies. The bus went down Spenard Road to where it pretty much ended at Spenard Lake and some unimproved trails toward Sand Lake. The driver would wait a few minutes at the the turn around before heading back north on Spenard Road.
The bus had just started back to pick up the kids that he didn’t on the way out when from out of the woods came a man rather limping towards us using his rifle as kind of a cruch. Wow, how exciting, I remember Lorrain wasn’t too thrilled though. The driver seemed to know the man (everyone pretty much knew everyone else in those days — or soon would). When the driver opened the door the man, covered with frost, said he fell through the ice while checking his traps and froze his leg. And to sort of emphisize this he banged on his left leg with the rifle stock. It sounded like knocking two 4x4s together. He asked for a ride into town and the driver had to help him up the steps because his leg was froze stiff. It seems I recall he must have taken his boot off to have a look at one time then couldn’t get it back on.
The ride into town took probably a good half hour and the guy would bang on his leg with the rifle from time to time, I guess to see if it was thawing out. The bus route went right by Providence Hospital when it was on the NW corner of L and 9th. The driver stopped to let frosty out but he said he’d rather be left off on 4th as the bars would be opening up soon. The driver said that he couldn’t do that because this was a school bus and he should go in the hospital to see that his leg was taken care of. Frosty got out thanking the driver and told us kids everything was going to be OK. We went to school. There was no indoor recess in those days and the teachers loved it.
I met my sister wherever we would meet up to either take the school bus home or sometimes she had a boy friend that would take her home. Anyway, at the dinner table that evening I told the story of Frosty and how his leg sounded like two logs bonking each other when he got off the bus &c. Lorrain wasn’t too happy in confirming the story but she also added that she and a girl friend (uh-huh) went to Hewitt’s Drug Store for lunch hour and saw Frosty clumping his way from bar to bar.
I don’t know how Frosty and his leg turned out, I only knew I wasn’t gonna be a trapper. Just remember, bundle up, stay warm.
unc’ ben
