Last Letters from Attu. Mary Breu

that were the size of strawberries. Just when it couldn’t get any more exciting, Foster made an announcement that would change two lives forever.

      While Etta was working at the post office, Foster and his friend, Frank Lundin, walked in. Foster looked at his friend, nodded in Etta’s direction, and said, “I’m going to marry that girl.”

       Tanana Post Office, where Etta worked in 1922.

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       Tanana

       1923–1930

      The weather was pleasant on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1923. Deep snow made walking difficult and the wind had blown snowdrifts several feet high, but on this particular day, the mild temperature matched the light spirits of a happy group of four people. This was the day that Charles Foster Jones married Etta Eugenie Schureman in a ceremony performed by justice of the peace Frank E. Howard. Frank Lundin remembered it this way: “On April 1, 1923, Foster married Etta Schureman. Etta’s sister, Marie, and I were the witnesses. After leaving the judge’s office, we went to the restaurant where I bought the wedding breakfast. Back to Etta’s home we went and hooked up the dog team for their honeymoon. They went over the mail trail to Koyukuk.” This was the first marriage for the bride and groom, both forty-three years old. After leaving Tanana, they had lunch at a woodcutter friend’s cabin, fifteen miles away, then continued for another thirty miles until they reached their final destination, which was a cabin they jokingly nicknamed the Honeymoon Hilton.

       Etta and Foster’s marriage license, April 1, 1923.

      Marie had been the most eager of the two sisters to go to Alaska the previous year. Once there, however, she encountered a lifestyle that overwhelmed her. Tanana was a tiny village with a population that was mainly Athabascan. She saw the same few white people over and over again. There was no opportunity to widen her small circle of friends. She had a problem adapting to the strange regional food. The scenery consisted of hills, trees, and rivers, and the weather was intolerable to her. Marie had left her family and friends in New Jersey with a pioneer’s spirit, but the tranquility of this expansive land was not what she had in mind.

       Top: Etta and Foster’s wedding photo, Tanana, Alaska, April 1, 1923‥ Above: Etta and Foster’s wedding party, Tanana, April 1, 1923: (left to right) Frank Lundin, Marie Schureman, Etta Jones, Foster Jones.

       Left: Etta and Foster on their dogsled, departing on their honeymoon, April 1, 1923. Below: Woodcutter Wingy Crane’s cabin, where Etta and Foster stopped for lunch on their honeymoon, April 1923. Bottom: Photo inscribed by Etta (April 1923): “45 miles from Tanana, Honeymoon Hilton, end of trip.”

       SHE SOON DISCOVERED that she did not like Alaska; the rough life did not appeal to her. Wonderful scenery and Northern lights and the romance of the North meant nothing to her. She longed for the bright lights, theaters, “swell” dances, parties, etc.

      At the end of one year, Marie returned home. Etta, on the other hand, had found more excitement and fulfillment than she ever could have expected in this peaceful place. In the fall of 1923, Etta replaced Marie at the school, thus beginning a teaching career that would span nineteen years in Alaska.

      TIME PASSED PLEASANTLY. There were always things to do, both summer and winter, with congenial people as companions. Who were our neighbors and friends? Just like the friends we had left at home. People from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, New York, from the South, the North, East, and West, from Canada and England and Scotland. Just people, like ourselves.

      Around June 21, the sun hardly left the sky. We used to go to Bridge parties about nine or ten in the evening when the sun was still shining, and we went home soon after midnight. There was always much laughter and joking. Happy memories! Early in June, we planted our flowerbeds. Soon we had huge pansies, mignonette, sweet william, mallows, hollyhocks, nasturtiums, daisies, asters, marigolds, almost any flower that grew in the States, and the wildflowers—lupines and wild roses. One vivid memory of these early days remains with me—of the gorgeous fragrant wild roses that grew in great profusion in the yard of an abandoned cabin across the street from our first little home after marriage. These brilliant beautiful things covered old fences, they surrounded doorways, they almost covered the old ruins. I looked for them every spring. They were like old friends who came back to tell of the warm weather coming. They are associated in my mind with spectacularly inspiring cloud effects, brilliant sunshine, and soft breezes.

      The gardens grew incredibly fast. With the hot sun above for almost twenty-four hours and with frozen ground a few feet underground supplying moisture to be drawn up by the sun, they raced along. One could almost see them grow, and vegetables grown under these conditions were unusually sweet and tender. Gardens were started early in June as soon as the ice was well out of the river, and in a few weeks harvesting began. Some things, like string beans, were risky because they would not stand frost, and often there were frosts in July or August. Tomatoes and cucumbers were grown under glass. Highbush and lowbush cranberries, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, currants, and gooseberries all grew wild and in profusion. There were jelly and jam-making times. The Alaskan cranberries were especially good—much sweeter than those in the States. They also kept beautifully fresh. There was always plenty of cranberry sauce to be served later with wild duck or goose, ptarmigan, grouse, moose, or caribou.

      Blueberries were put up in a way that was a forerunner of the modern deep-freeze method. As they were picked fresh, gallons and gallons of them, they were put into a wooden keg. A layer of berries, a layer of sugar, and the keg was put into a hold in a deep thicket where the sun did not penetrate. The hold was covered with moss, and the berries kept perfectly until we wanted them. Also like the deep freeze was the method of keeping cakes, cookies, pies, rolls, and bread. Late in the fall, after the cold weather was a settled thing, there would be a grand baking day, perhaps pies one day. I have made as many as eighteen—apple, mince, or berry—taking them directly from the oven to a forty-below temperature out of doors. They froze so quickly the steam inside seemed to be frozen right there. When wanted, they only needed to be allowed to stand in a warm room. Parker House rolls were made in quantities, put into a clean sugar bag, and hung up in the cache. When eaten, they were just like fresh rolls. While frozen, all these things could hardly be broken with an axe. They kept as long as the weather remained cold, until March or April.

      Ice cream was also made by mixing the ingredients, putting them into a tin lard pail, hanging the pail on a line, and beating it a little from time to time. This was only in subzero weather, however. Along the same line was the way travelers prepared beans for a trip into the wilderness. White navy beans were parboiled in salt water, drained into a sugar sack, and hung on the line to freeze, rubbing them from time to time to prevent them from freezing in a mass. They froze as individual little pellets, harder than in their natural state. These were kept frozen, being hung outside a cabin. When needed, a cup or two were brought in and dumped into a skillet in which bacon had been fried. In the deep, hot fat they fried like doughnuts, a delicious, crisp brown, soft on the inside. I have also made huge quantities of soup, freezing it, and bringing a small hunk into the house as needed.

      In June, along with wild roses and other beauties, came the pests of the North—mosquitoes. No part of Alaska is free from them. One would think that a region lying under ice and snow, mostly with subzero temperatures for six months, would be free from such things, yet they thrived. As snow melted from one side of a road, mosquitoes