In Ft. Yukon, many of the daily conveniences of most families in the United States were missing from our lives. Although we had them in Juneau, we were so young when we moved to Ft.Yukon that we mostly didn't miss them.

One of the big differences was in the area of the bathroom. The first winter we were in Ft. Yukon, we were dependent on an outhouse. Even after Daddy chinked the outhouse, using the bathroom was a cold, miserable experience. We learned to hold things as long as possible.

Mama and Daddy soon began to search for alternatives. They knew a flush toilet was out of the question. Without running water, that was an impossibility. What Daddy discovered was a chemical toilet. He bought one for use in the winter. In the summer the outhouse was still our bathroom. The chemical toilet consisted of a platform you sat on with a bucket with chemicals underneath. The chemicals dissolved human waste. They were also designed to minimize the smell. He put the chemical toilet off the kitchen beside the trap door that led to the basement. He erected a wall to separate the toilet room from the kitchen proper.

Having a chemical toilet was much better than having to use the outhouse. However, there was a drawback. The chemical toilet had to be emptied periodically. Emptying the toilet became a chore that we girls were expected to do. It took both Rhoda and I to haul the stinky bucket up the hill. We dumped it down the backside in a place that the Indians used as an unofficial dump.

One spring day, we hauled the bucket up the hill. The weather was pretty nice. It was still cold, but not unbearably so. Rhoda and I decided to race back to the house. Daddy had added a glass door to the front of the house. Mama had the inside door open, letting the sun in through the glass door. Rhoda and I were running full tilt down the hill to the house. Rhoda put out her arm to try to stop herself and crashed through the glass door. Glass went everywhere and Rhoda had quite a gash in her arm. Needless to say, that was the last time we raced our way back from the dump.

Another convenience we lacked was a regular bathtub. Our tub was a rubber tub that folded up. One of our summer missionaries thought he was hearing things when he heard Mama holler, "Oliver, where'd you put the bathtub." He'd never heard of misplacing a bathtub.

We took a bath every Saturday, whether we wanted to or not. Mama would heat water. We took baths in shifts. She would add more warm water after each shift so that by the time the last person bathed, the tub would be fairly full. You didn't really want to be the last one to bathe because that meant you were bathing in everyone else's filth. After we left Ft. Yukon, I switched to showers. I still think of bathing as soaking in dirty water, even if it is only from one person.

Another thing Daddy decided after that first winter was that he needed to figure out a way to get Mama running water in the kitchen. He rigged a fifty-gallon drum so that it hung with a tube running from it to a facet. Mama could turn on the facet and get water from the drum without having to dip it out.

Daddy had several fifty-gallon drums. He would put them in the back of the Jeep and fill them with water. He soon arranged with the school to fill his drums from their water tanks. He didn't have to go to the river; he just had to drive across the road.

Because we didn't have running water, Mama also didn't have a regular washing machine for laundry. She had a wringer washing machine. She would wash her clothes by hand and then feed them through a wringer that removed most of the water so they didn't take so long to dry. In the summer, she hung them on a clothesline in the back yard. In the winter, she had a line in the storeroom that she used.

By the time we moved to Ft. Yukon, most homes in the lower 48 and even in Alaska's cities had telephones. In Ft. Yukon, the NC Company had a telephone. Daddy gave the number to our relatives so that if there was an emergency, they could get in touch with us. Someone at the store would take a message and a number. We could use the phone to call them back, for a cost, of course. As far as our family was concerned, the telephone was for emergencies only.

I distinctly remember two phone calls that came by way of a message from someone at NC. The first announced the birth of my younger brother, Oliver. Mama was pregnant with Oliver when we moved to Ft. Yukon. A few weeks before his due date, she flew to Anchorage to stay with her sister, whose husband was stationed there in the military. She took Myra with her because Myra wasn't in school yet. On December 14, 1957, the call came in to NC. I had a baby brother.

The reason Mama had to go to Anchorage for his birth was that one of the conveniences missing in Ft. Yukon was medical services. A nurse visited the village. She did things like provide vaccines, and she did annual checkups at the school. There was no doctor. Mama and Daddy felt it was prudent for Mama to leave Ft. Yukon for the birth rather than rely on a native midwife or a visiting nurse.

I remember the nurse coming to the school. For some reason, one of the things the nurse did when she came to the school was to bring a portable x-ray machine. We would all line up in the gym and take off our shirts. Boys and girls lined up together. I guess we were young enough that there was nothing unmentionable to see if we took off our shirts. Still, I remember being embarrassed because I had to take off my shirt in front of the boys. We all got chest x-rays as part of our annual check up. Our eyes and ears were also checked. That's how I found out I needed glasses.

The second phone call came when Mama's father passed away. Grandpa had been sick for a while, but we weren't expecting a call telling of his death. Mama flew to Louisiana. Daddy followed with the rest of us a few days later, after arranging for a furlough. A furlough is an extended period of time away from a mission posting. We stayed in Louisiana for a couple of months.

Our interaction with our Louisiana cousins was a bit comical. By the time we flew to Louisiana, we had been living in Ft. Yukon for several years. We had learned the Indian communication pattern, which meant we used words sparingly. We also had a distinctly northern accent. Our southern cousins had a country drawl. We would be playing together. One of my cousins would say something in their southern twang. I'd respond, "What?" If I said something, their response was usually the same, "What?" What was the one word we understood completely?

Besides the communication problem, our Louisiana cousins thought we were a bit strange because we did things they thought were slightly batty. We would flush the toilet just to watch the water go down. While they might forget to flush, we never did. We couldn't wait to flush. We would pick up the phone just to listen to the dial tone.

Probably the most confusing to them was our lack of fear during thunderstorms. I loved storms. I would stand on the porch and let the wind blow through my hair. I wanted to go into the yard and twirl around in the rain. I wanted to go for a walk in the rain; I thought it was warm and wonderful. My grandmother would sit in a chair in the middle of the room. It had rubber tips on the legs. She would tell us to stay away from the windows. She had seen what lightening could do. We had not. In Alaska, storms did not include thunder and lightening. We had snowstorms and even rain, but we didn't have thunder. My cousins thought I was a crazy girl who courted disaster.

Another convenience we were missing in Ft. Yukon was central heat. Our version of central heat was the pot-bellied stove in the living room. Every morning Daddy would go downstairs and build up the fire. We were snuggled under a pile of blankets. When we heard a whooshing in the stovepipe, we would huddle around the pipe while we dressed. The stovepipe was the only source of warmth in our bedroom. One advantage of having the stove in the living room was that our bedroom floor was fairly warm during the day. Heat rises. The warm air would warm the floor, which happened to be the ceiling of the living room.

We had a huge woodpile in the back yard. Daddy would chop logs all summer in preparation for winter. I liked to help stack it, but I couldn't help for long because I was too short to pile the wood very high. Usually by the start of winter, there were various animals who had built homes in our woodpile. I remember weasels and mice disappearing into the woodpile. I'm sure they were surprised in the winter when their homes were dismantled as we burned their hiding places.

The other conveniences we didn't have were television and radio. I didn't really miss them. After that first week, I doubt that I even thought about Sgt. Preston, the only TV show I remember from Juneau. I didn't miss the radio. There was plenty of music in our house without one. I didn't really think about not having those entertainment pieces until later in life. A friend would mention a TV show that I knew nothing about. "How could you have missed that?" they would ask. "Well, I lived north of the Arctic Circle for four years," I would reply. "We didn't get TV up there." Or sometimes someone would hum a song and find it unbelievable that it was unfamiliar to me. "Everyone who grew up in the fifties should know that song," they would say. "Not everyone," I would say with a smile. "There were at least 700 or so people who lived in Ft. Yukon who are as ignorant as I am."

One convenience we did have was a motorized vehicle. It was one of the few in the village. Besides using it to haul water, Daddy used it to haul kids. He would pick up kids and bring them to church. We liked riding in the back of the Jeep. One time Myra was sitting on the side of the Jeep with a friend. Her friend fell out and pulled Myra with her. They weren't hurt, but they we pretty shook up. After that, the rule was that everyone had to sit in the bed of the truck. If anyone wasn't sitting properly, Daddy would stop the truck and put them out.

I was in the back of the Jeep the first time I remember having an awareness of my need for Jesus. I was looking up at the sky. There were clouds. One of them looked like a man in a long white robe. I thought, "Oh, no. Jesus is coming, and I'm not ready." After that I started thinking about what I needed to do to be ready for Jesus to come back. Eventually, I decided that I would invite Jesus to come and live in my heart.

Despite the lack of traditional conveniences, growing up in Ft. Yukon was a good experience. I had good friends, both Indian and white. We played lots of games together. We learned together. I had a loving family. We played together, too. To this day I prefer game night to television, and I have taught my boys the value of gaming. You build rapport and community around a game board that you don't build around a television. I had a wonderful church family. I learned a lot about the value of love. Mama and Daddy loved the Indian people. They poured their lives and their love into the community, just as they poured it into our family. They showed us what it meant to be Jesus to others. The lessons I learned as an Arctic MK still serve me well today.