Just Another Jim's

Alaska Journal

Ch. 6: Ordinary Life

Posted August 18, 2006 by James E. Nelson

Life in Delta Junction was pretty ordinary for a small town. It was both a military and recreational community and that shaped life in Delta. Very few of the soldiers got involved in the community life because their tours of duty were so short, but in spite of a certain segregation, the base flavored most everything in town. The bowling alley, movie theater, a restaurant, and the recreational center (all open to the public) were all located on the base. In turn some soldiers came into town for church, recreation, or shopping.

Community life that was not centered at the base was centered around the school. There were two grade schools, one in town and one on base. The middle school was on base and the high school in town. Delta didn’t have a football team, but basketball, volleyball, and especially hockey provided sports entertainment. Band and choral concerts were also well attended as well as the annual school play. In addition, there were a number of activities for those with a variety of special interests. There was a dance school in town. The library had a number of literary events especially for kids. There were reading clubs, quilting groups, flower arranging classes sponsored by the florist, and a variety of dances and social events at the community hall.

In short, Delta Junction was like small towns scattered across America from north to south. Everyday life was not much different than life in Blue Rapids, Kansas, the location of another church I had served. Delta had a grocery store, two lumber yards, a sporting goods store, a general store, and other smaller business establishments. There were also several eating establishments and bars. Delta even had a business mall of sorts. It was built by the local real estate agent whose office was in the mall. It also housed the florist, hair parlor, an abstractor, and a gambling place featuring pull tabs.

Layered on top of this were all the accouterments of a recreational community. You were as likely to see a four wheeler (or snow machine in the winter) as an automobile in the parking lots. Every other pickup was pulling a boat. People were always taking time off to go fishing or hunting. The conversation around the table was as likely to be about the size of the moose rack, how the fishing is on the Clearwater, or when the salmon would start running, as it was to be about work. With minor variations, the same conversations could be heard in Oregon, Minnesota, or Missouri.

Delta is more spread out than most towns. Delta Junction—that’s the name of the actual town—is located at the junction of two major highways. The terminus of the Alaska Highway is in the middle of town. It junctions with the Richardson Highway, which goes north to Fairbanks and south across the mountains, eventually leading to Valdez. About ten miles north is the community of Big Delta. Big Delta is located where the road (and previously the gold trail) crossed the Tanana River. The heart of Big Delta is a roadhouse that has a long history, going back to the gold rush days. Today Big Delta is mostly a housing area, although it also has a gas station, liquor store, auto repair shop and restaurant. To the east of Delta Junction, five miles down the Alaska Highway, is another commercial area that includes all the Dept. of Agriculture offices, and other various professional businesses.

Another major housing area is to the east and north. Most of the houses in this development are acreages, so one can drive through without realizing it’s a community with a fairly large population. About five miles to the south of town is Ft. Greeley. These little communities make up what most people refer to as Delta. In addition there are farming (mostly barley) and ranching (mostly cattle) communities to the east and north. And north of the Tanana River are more small groups of houses populated by loggers and gold miners. Across the Delta River, near the mouth of the Tanana is a religious commune that is the source of a number of rumors and innuendo, but in fact, there is far less connection between the town and the commune than there is between the town and the military base; the commune played virtually no role in the life of Delta other than creating conversation over lunch.

But everyday life in Delta was also rather extraordinary in many significant ways. Many people in the area serviced by Delta Junction lived off the grid. They lived in cabins that had no electricity, phone service, nor running water. As odd as it may sound, running water can be a bigger hassle in interior Alaska than living without it. When the heat is turned off pipes freeze very quickly. Many people had jobs that required them to be away many days at a time. Given the schedules, it was easier to simply not have running water at all.

Living in such a cabin certainly requires a different daily pattern, but many an Alaskan has proved that while different, such primitive cabins can also be quite luxurious. Such a lifestyle requires procuring plenty of fire wood for the year, hauling water, and making sure the propane tank is full. (Propane lights as well as stoves and refrigerators were not uncommon.) Most everyone also owned a generator in case electricity was needed. While that may seem unimaginably inconvenient for those who have never lived this way, such a lifestyle led to the remarkable peace of mind that resulted from never having to worry about severe winter storms that would knock out the electricity and the freedom to be able to leave for extended periods without having to worry about utilities.

Of course the great unspoken question of such a lifestyle is hygiene. The idea of outhouses and honey pots (containers for going to the bathroom inside the house on cold nights) no doubt sounds terribly primitive to most readers, but in practice is more a matter of convenience than anything else. Several businesses (the Laundromat, a couple of the gas stations, and the general store) had shower facilities that could be used for a small fee. There was often a certain queasiness that people new to the lifestyle had, but once the new resident chose to accept the situation, visiting friends in a primitive cabin was not a bad experience at all.

The ordinary and extraordinary often ran together in ways that were as humorous as they were remarkable, creating a host of situations specific to Delta that were sometimes simply odd but sometimes almost surreal.. A single woman and good friend of ours lived in a house with electricity, phone, and cable television service but no running water—she didn’t want the hassle of having to worry about frozen pipes if she decided to up a leave for a few days or weeks at a time. As a result she had to have an outhouse, which was about twenty-five yards from her back door. She kept a loaded pistol and a novel in an out-of-the-way corner of her outhouse because moose frequented her back yard, especially just before dawn and just after dusk. A moose, especially a mother with a calf in tow, can be very dangerous. After getting stuck in her outhouse a couple of times waiting for a cow and calf to leave, she bought a pistol for her outhouse to protect her from a potential moose or bear incident and the novel to avoid getting bored when she did get stuck.

The Christmas and New Year’s school break was always at least two weeks long so people would have time to travel outside (in other words, to somewhere other than Alaska). Many of the school teachers heated their homes exclusively with wood. As a result, finding people willing and reliable enough to stoke the various wood stoves in the empty houses twice a day became a major annual undertaking. Different people provided different perks (such as allowing house sitters to use the big screen t.v. for the bowl games) in order to attract reliable house sitters.

But we had running water, a toilet, cable television, and a phone, so everyday life in Delta was about the same for us as it had been in Nebraska and Kansas. My schedule included pastoral visitation, sermon preparation, various meetings. We did a lot of our grocery shopping in town. Chris walked across the street to the video and trading card store to do business or hang out with friends. We also made regular trips to Fairbanks for bigger purchases. In the summer we had a lot of picnics at the many parks and camping facilities in the area. Mostly our lives were remarkably ordinary. But at the most unexpected times the extraordinary undercurrent of interior Alaska would break into our lives, reminding us that Delta was as odd and unique as it was ordinary. These reminisces of Alaska are mostly about the extraordinary (who wants to hear about our trip to the grocery store or an exciting morning of coffee, donuts, and gossip—the heart of pastoral visitation—after all). But chapter after chapter of exciting (and maybe slightly exaggerated) stories need to be put into the context of this mostly ordinary life of a rural pastor and his family.