One day I was shopping at the only general store in Karluk. Joe Brown, the store keeper, approached me about caring for the store while he would be in the States for about a month and a half. In addition to the store I would also be postmaster and the radio telephone operator. After much though I agreed to do this for a friend.
During the time Joe would be gone I would have to live in his living quarters. The transmitter was located there as well as the store books. It was easier to keep watch over the store. I applied for the radio operators license and before Joe left the license arrived. Most store keeping was routine: selling, keeping records, sending reports and records to Seattle headquarters of the Alaska Packers Assn. The radio schedule was kept twice daily and I sent monthly reports to the US Post office in Seattle, Washington. I also kept up with my missionary duties and commitments. The added commitments did not allow for anything extra. It cut my sleep to the a point that was extreme. There are some memories that are vivid, some comical, and some that were serious.
One day two elderly men came to the store and announced that they needed several dollars worth of chicken feed. They placed the bills on the counter while I determined the amount of feed they would get. From the back of the store where the supplies are kept, I could hear them discussing something in Aleut. When I placed the feed on the counter they exclaimed, “No No!, that’s not the kind of chicken feed we want. We want chicken feed like 5 cents, 10 cents, 25 ,cents and 50 cents.” I finally figured out that they wanted change. They were playing poker. We had a good laugh that day and many days after. The discussion I had overheard in Aleut, was their theorizing on why I kept the money in the back of store with the supplies, instead of in the safe.
Another comical incident took place one day after the chief came into the store and asked me if the store carried any women’s underpants for sale. I told him that we did so he told me that he needed two pair of underpants for his wife. I asked him, “What size?” He looked at me bewildered and replied, “How should I know?” I told him I couldn’t give the articles until he went home and got her size. To this he replied, “You should know her size, you’re the storekeeper.”
One evening while operating the radio telephone schedule I had difficulty reaching the Kodiak Station. We had excessive sun spot activity which interfered with the radio transmission. While I was trying to reach Kodiak, Tom Olson from the Chignik, Alaska Packers Assn. Cannery store broke into my transmission. He said a woman in his village had symptoms of appendicitis and he wanted the Navy to send a plane to the village of Chignik to get the woman to a hospital. I tried calling Kodiak for almost an hour when I hung up. A day or two later Tom called me again to thank me for trying to pass on his message. He said the Navy had sent a plane and the woman indeed needed an appendectomy. He said a ham radio operator in south-central Oregon heard me trying to contact Kodiak for almost an hour. He tried as well and was successful, so the message did get through. I could not reach Kodiak one-hundred miles away, but the ham operator in Oregon almost two thousand miles away could!
Another memorable incident took place during a winter northeastern storm. The cable bridge over the Karluk river from the spit to the village was snapping up and down. It seemed impossible for a person to cross. I happened to look out the window and say six year old Helen Antoneson just getting on the bridge on her way to school. I hurried to open the door to warn her not attempt to cross the bridge, but she was already at the midway point. The bridge swayed and snapped, and Helen was thrown over the cable holding the bridge and side-guards in place. Helen was in the river and drifting out to sea. As I ran across the bridge a young man from the village on the other side saw the child at about the same time. He too ran to her rescue. When I reached to point where she fell in, the young man was already in the water and soon had her by her heavy winter coat. I was able to help him bring her ashore and subsequently to the school. Although unable to swim, the heavy winter coat kept Helen afloat and bouyant. We then took Helen home where her mother said that Helen was insistent that she was going to school. Needless to say, her mother kept her home the remainder of the day.
During August of 1944, Mr. Robert Williams arrived in the village to replace the sc.hool teachers who left Karluk to teach school in Shishmaref on the Arctic coast of Alaska. Mr Williams was expecting his wife to follow later. When the mail-boat arrived she was not on it, but a letter was in her place. In it she announced that she would not be coming, but rather she was leaving him. A boy came running to my place telling me I was needed at the teachers quarters immediately. The boy said that Mr. Williams was very sick and was asking for me. When I arrived I learned that Mr. Williams had suffered a heart attack, he had angina and told me where he kept his nitroglycerin tablets[1]. I hurried to give them to him with water, but he did not seem to be much relieved. He kept calling for God to help him and kept kicking the wall as he lay on the couch. A few minutes later he was dead. Several days after the death, an officer from the office of the Alaska Native Service arrived and sought me out. He asked me whether I would consider to teach the school for the coming year. Since it was a two teacher school, I said I would if he could find another candidate to teach as well. He said I should teach the upper grade. He then was able to get Agnes Brown, Joe’s wife, to teach lower grades, one through three[2].
I was teaching for several weeks when a young girl came running and knocking on my girl. She announced that I should hurry because a woman was bedridden and needed me. She had yawned and dislocated her jaw and was unable to close her mouth, talk, or do anything. I quickly went to the first aid room in the teachers quarters to see if I could find anything about such dislocations. Fortunately I found such dislocations. I took along a bath towel as suggested in the book, and followed the girl to the patient. I found her with her mouth wide open and unable to speak. I tried to comfort her and explained what I was going to do. I wrapped my thumbs well with the towel and placed them on her lower molars and then put equal pressure on each side of the jaw. As I did this her jaws quickly snapped into place. After her mouth closed I was happy that I followed the directions explicitly for I would have been bitten as the jaw snapped into place. Never did I expect to perform such an act, but I asked for it the first Sunday I arrived in Karluk.
A few days later, I was called to the Naumoff home. Alex, about eight years old had such a bad case of tonsillitis that he throat was almost completely shut. John Tichy, a missionary who was in the medical corps in World War I told me that as a medic he had to treat many men with bad throats. His remedy was several drops of glycerin and two or three drops of iodine. I painted the infected area with a swab and in a day or two the throat was much better.
[1] Editor’s Note: Ruth tells us that while Mr Williams died of natural causes, Stephen found a suicide note and a revolver on his school desk after his death. He handed them to the officer from the Alaska Native Service, inquiring, “What do you want to do with these ?” He simply removed the bullets and tore up the note.
[2] Editor’s Note: Those who knew Stephen will recognize his teaching style. When a child brought him an assignment, he would ask, “Is it finished?” The usual response was “It’s good enough.” To this the standard response was the hand the paper back and say, “Good enough is only half done, go finish it!”
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