One of my earliest memories, when I was about 3, is of snowmobiling with Santa. Looking back, I’m not sure Santa was actually on the snowmobile, but in my mind he was. At least, I was riding on the back of the snowmobile, then was picked up and plopped on his lap. Surely he was there, too. I always pictured Santa abandoning his sleigh to race across the frozen white land on his Arctic Cat.
It was a privilege to grow up Alaskan and I wore the title Sourdough with pride. It was a gift to sit at the feet of the old Tlingit woman who taught beading and moccasin making. It was a thrill to deliver homemade banana bread to Montana Joe in his one-room cabin. He was one of the last homesteaders in Juneau and, even as I child, I knew I was looking into the face of history.
I was always told not to disturb the bricks I found when exploring the ruins of the A.J. Mine or the Treadwell mine. “Those bricks are valuable.” That’s why, when I moved to Arkansas and saw all the brick houses, I thought everyone was rich.
And all the time, it was I who was rich. Rich in a heritage and a boatload of Alaskan memories I will never forget.
3 comments:
Hold that thought. Add to it hundreds more. Publish it. I'll buy the first dozen copies!!
I love these stories and the way you tell them.
(All the other kids you grew up with could help with ideas, you know. Rob, and Linda, and the other musketeers, etc.)
How about a chapter for each month of the year?
To set the record straight:
It was Santa himself driving that snow mobile. He was visiting Juneau to help promote a new mobile-home park that would be opening in the near future in Lemon Creek area.
I always wanted a helicopter ride with Santa.
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