The Way We Were

August 19, 1920

Ted Sterling, the popular purser on the Hazel B, says that in all the time he has been on the Stikine River, he has never seen game so plentiful as at the present time. It is customary to see three or four bears on each trip up and down the river, but on the trip down last Tuesday 14 bears were sighted along the river bank within a few hours travel.

August 17, 1945

As soon as peace was announced on Tuesday thanksgiving services were held at the local Catholic church, the Rev. M. Hoch, officiating. The Rosary and other devotions of thanksgiving were offered. A Holy Mass of peace was celebrated Wednesday morning. Announcement is made that at the close of the fishing season a parish picnic will be held to which all Wrangell friends are invited.

August 20, 1970

Gene Hiebert has a problem with his garden on the North Road near the airport. It grows too fast. “I have to get out there and cut things back, otherwise they grow wild,” said Hiebert. What does it is the rain. It waters Hiebert’s vegetables most every day. His crops including lettuce, potatoes, raspberries, tomatoes, peas, carrots, cabbages, rhubarb, strawberries and chard, virtually cover the yard at the Hiebert home. Hiebert, who works as a boom man at Alaska Wood Products, uses mink fertilizer, ashes and seaweed over “muskeg at least 10 feet deep” for his growing soil. “I didn’t know how they’d grow when I started this a couple years ago,” he said. “ I just went ahead and stood back and up they came, muskeg or not.” Hiebert who came to Alaska 18 years ago from Napa, Calif., to work in the lumber industry, also has put up a hothouse, wood framing covered by plastic material, in his backyard where he is trying his tomatoes, peas and other plants. Meanwhile, the outside crops are keeping Hiebert busy with his shears as they respond to an extra-rainy Wrangell summer.

August 17, 1995

The eye in the back of the driver’s head this year is actually a video camera that continuously records action in the back of two school buses Greg McCormack has added to Etolin Bus company’s stable. When school opens this fall the two buses will be on regular routes, with a third bus added for winter hazardous routes, probably around November, and a fourth as a spare. Etolin Bus Company is completely refurbishing inside and out the two added vehicles, purchased from Fairbanks School District. They are doing the work in the bus barn, built last year, where mechanics can maintain the buses in year-round comfort.

 

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